Computer reservations systems (CRS), also known as global distribution systems (GDS) are used by travel industry employees worldwide to make airline, hotel and car rental reservations for their clients. They also are used to calculate airfares and issue airline tickets. In particular, information for airline passenger reservations is entered into central computer system and this information, or at least parts of the information, is then shared with, or available to, other airlines and ticketing agencies. For the purposes of this specification these types of computer reservation systems shall be defined as “shared computer reservation systems” (SCRS) as the data they contain is accessible to and/or shared by more than one airline.
During the creation of an airline travel document (FIGS. 4–5) for an airline flight, the computer data from the SCRS is downloaded by the ticketing agent at the airline counter in the airport or by a travel agent or ticket reseller (Travelocity.com) and portions of the available downloaded information are recorded onto a magnetic stripe on the backside of the boarding document (FIG. 5). This information is then carried by the passenger to the gate area where the information recorded on the boarding document is confirmed by reading the recorded information and comparing it to the data associated with the boarding document in the central computer system of the airline or on a local area network.
The information is recorded onto a magnetic stripe on the back of the boarding document as heretofore only magnetic stripes were able to hold the amount of data needed to be contained on the boarding documents in an inexpensive and portable manner which also permitted, within the air terminal, recording and re-recording and reading of the information. Magnetic stripe recording is similar to audio and video recording. In magnetic stripe recording the magnetic material is applied to a paper or plastic card or ticket. The data is stored on the stripe instead of on tape. The stripes can be recorded, read, and re-recorded multiple times. The black or brown magnetic stripe is made up of magnetic particles of resin. Brown stripes are generally low-coercivity (LoCo), while black stripes are high-coercivity cards (HiCo). Coercivity is the ability of the magnetic stripe to resist demagnetization. The resin particle material used determines the coercivity of the stripe: low-coercivity stripes of 300 Oe (oersteds) are made of iron oxide and high-coercivity stripes of 2750 to 4000 Oe are usually made from barium ferrite. The higher the coercivity, the harder it is to encode—and erase—information from the stripe.
The data on magnetic stripes is recorded in “tracks” much like audio sound tracks. A single magnetic stripe has multiple tracks on it that are available for recording. There are four track locations on a standard credit or ATM card. In other magnetic stripe uses, such as airline tickets and/or boarding passes the track locations and data format do not necessarily follow the standards set out for financial cards. The four magnetic tracks have been assigned names and numbers as listed below:
“Track 1” as used by the International Air Transportation Association (IATA), contains alphanumeric information for airline ticketing or other transactions where a reservation database is accessed.
“Track 2” was developed by the American Bankers Association (ABA) contains numeric information for the automation of financial transactions. Track 2 is also used by most systems that require an identification number and a minimum of other control information.
“Track 3” typically contains information which is intended to be updated during each transaction. For example for a private gift card that operates “off-line” from a central computer, the cash register might read the contents of this track to determine the amount of value on the card. At the conclusion of a transaction this track of the card would be updated with the new value of the card reflecting the old card value minus the amount of the concluded transaction.
“Track 4” is reserved.
A magnetic stripe is encoded with bit patterns, which correspond to alphanumeric (Track 1) or numeric (Tracks 2 & 3) ASCII characters. The number of bits on a given track is limited to a certain number of bits per inch, or BPI. There are also a series of all zero bits encoded at the beginning and end of a magnetic stripe. These all zero bits are known as “clocking bits” and establish timing for the code reading device.
The magnetic striped cards used for airline boarding documents present a number of deficiencies to the cost conscious airline industry. Each magnetic card blank cost the airline between seven and eleven cents ($0.07–$0.11) each to purchase. New magnetic stripe boarding pass cards have a failure rate of approximately five to seven percent (5–7%) on the first attempt. This failure rate is incurred while attempting to read and confirm the pre-recorded serial number, or stock control number, (FIG. 4) that is applied to each card before any writing is attempted on the card. A second failure rate of approximately five to seven percent (5–7%) on the first attempt is presented by magnetic stripe boarding pass cards upon attempting to read the recorded information after the recording process at the airline check-in counter. Thus an average overall failure rate of approximately fourteen percent (10–14%) is presented in the day to day use of magnetic stripe boarding pass cards. For an airline using 2 million such documents this represents a loss of $28,000 in unusable card stock. In contrast, a ticket or boarding document blank that does not contain a magnetic stripe costs approximately three-thousandths of a cent each ($0.003) to purchase and avoids the failure rate associated with a magnetic stripe.
Further, the use of magnetic stripe cards for recording ticket and boarding document information requires that air carriers use thousands of magnetic stripe printers and readers which are very expensive devices to purchase and to keep in repair. For example, a typical magnetic stripe recorder and text printer device costs approximately $4,000 per machine. The corresponding magnetic stripe reader device used at a jetway or boarding gate costs approximately $6,000. Since each airline must purchase its own devices for each airport ticket counter and gate, tens of thousands of these devices must be purchased by airlines and replacement devices must be kept on hand to replace defective devices. For an airline operating in only 15 airports and having 10 ticketing locations in each airport using writer devices and 15 aircraft gates in each airport using reader devices, the basic cost of using magnetic stripe card reader/writer equipment would be approximately $1,950,000 in equipment purchase costs. This cost does not include the cost of the magnetic card stock having a fourteen percent (14%) waste component or the costs of stocking replacement units at each airport.
In contrast, a typical reader/writer unit for printing and reading multi-dimensional bar codes costs approximately $1,000 and the scanner device used at the boarding gate costs between $300 and $400 dollars. Thus, the equipment cost for the airline operating at 15 airports and having 10 ticketing locations in each airport using writer devices and 15 aircraft gates in each airport using reader devices, would be approximately $240,000 when avoiding the use of magnetic stripe cards. A savings of $1,710,000 in equipment.
The information recorded onto magnetic stripe boarding pass cards is data about the passenger, the passenger's flight itinerary; passenger contact information, security information, number of bags checked on the flight, and other information. Some of this data is used by the air carrier to document passenger preferences and other information is used to identify and verify the passenger at the time of flight boarding.
Every airline reservation for a passenger, or group of passengers, is associated with a booking code under which the reservation is stored in a central booking computer. This booking code is known as the Passenger Name Record (PNR). It is defined by means of a combination of five or six letters and numbers. In the PNR, additional information on the traveler or special service requests can also be included. Since one PNR is created for each travel plan, passenger name records and passengers do not necessarily match up one to one: a group traveling together may have one record with only travel agency information in it.
Each PNR has five mandatory fields: number of passengers and their names; contact phone number; ticketing information; ticket order received-from data; and itinerary. Each part that contains data about the passenger is referred to as a field. The passenger data fields thus include a Name field, Phone field, Ticketing field, and Received-from field. Each field has an identifier, or function code, which is used to enter data into that field. For example, the identifier for the Name field is the hyphen. This field identifier tells the computer system what field to use for storing the data.
Name Field
The Name field contains one or more name items. Passenger names are grouped together by last name. All passengers who share a last name are listed in a collective name item. A PNR may contain one or more name items—for example, parties with different surnames. For international travel, the passenger's complete name should be entered in the PNR, as documented on the traveler's passport.
Phone Field
Each PNR must include at least one contact phone number for one member of the traveling party. In addition, the travel agency phone number is customarily entered first, with passenger contact phone numbers listed in the following order: business, home, hotel, if available and applicable. Multiple numbers can be entered for each passenger, but each phone listing must be identified as Agency, Business, Home, or Hotel.
Ticketing Field
Information entered in the Ticketing field depends on the ticketing arrangements requested by the passenger. For example, if the tickets will be printed on a future date, the intended ticketing date is entered. On that date the PNR will appear automatically in an electronic holding area called the ticketing queue. By looking in the queue, the agent can determine which reservations are scheduled to be ticketed on that day. If a prepaid ticket advisory (PTA) is sent to the airline, the PTA date is entered. Information in the Ticketing field is identified by a function code, and only one entry is allowed in the Ticketing field. This limitation is known as a single-field entry. The ticketing field can also be used to record a time limit in conjunction with a passenger reservation, for example, a client might wish that tickets be issued at the airport prior to departure. The recent advent of electronic ticketing or e-tickets has eliminated some of the complications previously associated with providing the passenger with ticket documents.
Received from Field
A received-from entry is used to record the party who placed the air reservation, be it the passenger, parent, secretary, etc.
Itinerary Field
The itinerary consists of one or more air segments. Each segment represents a confirmed, requested or wait-listed reservation on a designated flight.
When a travel agent makes a reservation, they enter data on a computer reservations systems/global distribution systems (CRS/GDS) terminal, and create a PNR in that CRS/GDS. If the airline is hosted in a different CRS/GDS, information about the flight(s) on that airline is sent to the airline's host system, and a PNR is created in the airline's partition in that system as well. What information is sent between airlines, and how, is specified in the Airline Interline Message Procedures (AIRIMP) manual, although many airlines and CRS's/GDS's have their own direct connections and exceptions to the AIRIMP standards.
If, for example, a reservation is made on United Airlines (which outsources the hosting of its reservations database to the Galileo CRS/GDS) through the Internet travel agency Travelocity.com (which is a division of Sabre, and uses the Sabre CRS/GDS), Travelocity.com creates a PNR in Sabre. Sabre sends a message derived from portions of the Sabre PNR data to Galileo, using the AIRIMP (or another bilaterally-agreed format). Galileo in turn uses the data in the AIRIMP message to create a PNR in United's Galileo “partition.”
If a set of reservations includes flights on multiple airlines, each airline is sent the information pertaining to its flights. If information is added later by one of those airlines, it may or may not be transmitted back to the CRS/GDS in which the original reservation was made, and almost never will be sent to other airlines participating in the itinerary that are hosted in different CRS's/GDS's. So there can be many different PNR's, in different CRS's/GDS's, for the same set of reservations, none of them containing all the data included in all of the others.
When a ticket is issued, that is recorded in the PNR; if it is an e-ticket, the actual “ticket”, as defined by the airline, is the electronic ticket record in the PNR. When you check-in, the claim check numbers and the weights of your bags are added to the PNR. If you don't show up for a flight on which you are booked, that fact is logged in the PNR. Whenever anything in the reservation is added, changed, or canceled, that information may be communicated back to the CRS/GDS that holds the original PNR. If you call the airline or visit its Web site, and request seat assignments, that is entered in the PNR. If your travel agency or the airline uses Sabre, and you look up your airline reservation on Sabre's “VirtuallyThere.com” Web site, and add a car reservation through VirtuallyThere.com, that goes in the same Sabre PNR.
As now can be appreciated a substantial amount of information is available about a passenger and passenger travels via the PRN. Further, it should be appreciated that it is necessary that this information be available in a form—a data stream—that can be received by an air carrier ticketing agent for recording onto a magnetic stripe. The recording of this information onto a magnetic stripe is required of all airline tickets, but is often ignored on U.S. domestic flights. Instead, for domestic flights, information about the flight and passenger is printed on the boarding document using bar codes printed on the front of the ticket using information generated by the airline about its own domestic flight and not using a downloaded PNR magnetic data stream.
However, if a U.S. airline is to issue boarding documents that will be accepted on international flights it is a necessity that the PNR data be recorded onto a magnetic stripe on the back of boarding documents or the boarding documents will be rejected upon their use on an international flight. This PNR data must be recorded in the order and position dictated in the Airline Interline Message Procedures (AIRIMP) manual.
Therefore, while it has been possible for an airline offering only domestic flights to ignore the international and FAA requirements for use of magnetically recorded PNR information on domestic boarding documents this is not possible for airlines that issue boarding documents for both domestic and international flights. These air carriers are required to receive PNR data and record the required PNR data on a magnetic stripe on ticket and boarding documents to permit the ticket and boarding documents they issue to be accepted during the international leg of their flight schedules or the flight schedules of international airlines for whom they are issuing documents.
Therefore, in view of this requirement airlines that issue international flight documents must use the central computer PNR data streams and magnetic stripe cards for all their flight documents and incur the substantial cost presented by magnetic stripe cards for all their flights or find a means to avoid, at least partially, the costs of magnetic stripe cards while continuing to use the PNR data stream and offer magnetic stripe cards as needed for international flights.
One barrier to a solution to this extra cost is the amount of information that is required to be provided on an airline boarding document or ticket. This quantity of information is far in excess of that which can be contained in a conventional bar code that is commonly used to present the universal product code (UPC) on products. A partial solution to this problem is found in the use of multi-dimensional bar codes (FIG. 6).
Two-dimensional symbology or bar codes were introduced in late 1980's with Code 49. Since then many other multi-dimensional “bar codes” or “codes” have been developed to meet the demand for storage of portable information in as little space as possible. Several terms are used for this type of data storage such as “two-dimensional code” or “2-D code” or “two-dimensional symbology” or “2-D symbology.” These names refer to the general class of bar codes or symbols that use more than one physical dimension to store or present or contain information.
One-dimensional bar codes, seen on current packaging, are made up of a series of one-dimensional bars or lines with spaces between. The series of bars and spaces having a varying width present the coded data. A “one-dimensional bar code” is “vertically redundant.” The height of the line or “bar” is merely a repetition of the same information that is presented by the width of the line or “bar.” The bar height can be lengthened or reduced without information being lost. The vertical redundancy permits the presence of printing defects such as ink blob or printing gap while still allowing the bar code to be read. As the height increases the probability increases that the bar code will be readable.
2-dimensional symbologies or codes can contain far more information within the same space as can one-dimensional bar codes. This presents an advantage when only a small amount of space is available for information storage. Some examples of the multi-dimensional symbologies that are currently available are:
Matrix Code
“Matrix Code” (Table 2) stores data based on the position of black spots within a matrix. Each black spot or element is the same dimension. The position of the element serves to code the data.
3D Barcode
3D bar code is simply a one dimensional bar code that is embossed on a surface. The code is read by using differences in line depth, rather than contrast, to distinguish between bars and spaces. The code can be used where printed labels will not adhere and can be painted or coated and still read. 3-DI 3-DI (Table 2) uses small circular symbols.
Array Tag
Array Tag (Table 2) code is made up of hexagonal symbols and a patented border. Array Tags are capable of encoding hundreds of characters and can be read at distances of more than 50 yards.
Aztec Code
The Aztec Code (Table 2) symbols are on a square grid with a square central bullseye. The smallest Aztec Code format encodes 13 numeric or 12 alphabetic characters, the largest format encodes 3832 numeric or 3067 alphabetic characters.
Code 49
Code 49 uses a series of one dimensional bar codes stacked one on top of another. Each bar code can have between two and eight rows. Every row contains the data in exactly 18 bars and 17 spaces, and each row is separated by a one-module high separator bar.
CP Code
CP Code is made up of square matrix symbols with an L-shaped finder.
Data Matrix
Data Matrix is a 2-D matrix code that can store between one and 500 characters. The symbol is scalable between a 1-mil square to a 14-inch square. Data Matrix symbol has a maximum theoretical density of 500 million characters to the inch. Each symbol has two adjacent sides printed as solid bars, while the remaining adjacent sides are printed as a series of equally spaced square dots. These patterns are used to indicate both orientation and printing density of the symbol.
MaxiCode
Maxicode was developed by United Parcel Service and is made up of a 1-inch by 1-inch array of 866 interlocking hexagons. Approximately 100 ASCII characters can be held in the 1-inch square symbol. The symbol can still be read even when up to 25 percent of the symbol has been destroyed.
PDF 417
PDF417 is a stacked symbology and was invented by Ynjiun Wang in 1991 at Symbol Technologies. PDF stands for Portable Data File, and the symbology consists of 17 modules each containing 4 bars and spaces (thus the number “417”). The code is in the public domain. The structure of the code allows for between 1000 to 2000 characters per symbol with an information density of between 100 and 340 characters. Each symbol has a start and stop bar group that extends the height of the symbol. A PDF417 symbol can be read with modified handheld laser or CCD scanners. High density printers (thermal transfer or laser) should be used to print the symbol.
While multi-dimensional bar codes can provide a means for presenting the high quantity of information that was formerly presented on the magnetic stripe it presently is necessary that air carriers continue to use the available PNR data stream for receiving PNR data and, where required, for recording onto magnetic stripe cards for any international flights they issue.
Therefore, it would be a substantial benefit to air carriers if a means were available which would allow the air carrier to use the PNR magnetic data stream for international flight documents having magnetic stripes thereon while providing the ability to select and sort the information presented in the PNR data stream for conversion into a multi-dimensional symbology that could be printed onto domestic flight documents and permit the airline to avoid the cost of magnetic stripe cards where possible.
It further would be a substantial benefit to air carriers if a means were available which would allow the air carrier to use the PNR magnetic data stream for international flight documents having magnetic stripes thereon while providing the ability to select and sort the information presented in the PNR data stream for conversion into a multi-dimensional symbology that could be printed onto domestic air flight documents thereby avoiding the substantial cost of the reader and writer devices that currently are used to read and write magnetic stripe cards in airports.
It further would be a substantial benefit to air carriers if a means were available which would allow air carriers to eliminate the use of ticket and boarding documents having magnetic data recording stripes while preserving the use of the computer software systems associated with the use of the PNR magnetic data stream thereby producing a cost savings for the airline industry by eliminating, altogether, the reading and writing equipment associated with the use of magnetic stripe cards as well as eliminating the use of magnetic stripe cards while allowing for the inclusion of additional passenger information such as digital photographic data of the passenger and baggage identities.